An oscilloscope is an instrument that is often used to generate a visual representation of various types of electrical signals. Oscilloscopes can be broadly classified under two different categories—analog oscilloscopes and digital oscilloscopes. Analog oscilloscopes, which use analog circuitry for processing and displaying a signal, provide some benefits but tend to be limited in terms of certain capabilities. On the other hand, digital oscilloscopes can address several limitations associated with analog oscilloscopes, in large part due to the ability of digital oscilloscopes to convert an analog input signal into digital data that can be operated upon and manipulated in various ways to suit a user's needs.
Typically, various factors such as cost, packaging limitations, and customer requirements, tend to make manufacturers produce digital oscilloscopes with a limited number of input signal ports (typically two input signal ports). In some cases, however, a customer may desire to view several more signals than a single digital oscilloscope can accommodate. Conventionally this can be achieved by using multiple digital oscilloscopes that are configured to synchronize with each other by using synchronizing trigger signals that coordinate the display of individual waveforms on the multiple oscilloscopes. However, several of these conventional techniques that are used to synchronize multiple oscilloscopes can suffer from various shortcomings such as having unacceptable levels of jitter, triggering ambiguities, timing ambiguities, and timing delays.